


put me on speakerphone

by ascience



Category: Football RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: German National Team, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 16:25:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4794311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ascience/pseuds/ascience
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marc is called up to the senior squad and finds out he's missing something. Or someone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	put me on speakerphone

Marc is called up for the internationals with the senior squad, so it’s all fine, and they win against Poland, so, really, it’s all _fine_.

Except that sometimes, when Marc makes a save during training, he has the impulse to turn to someone he can sneer at, and whenever he fails, he wants to make sure no one saw – but next to him, there are just Manuel and Ron.

Manuel is only ever minding his own business, and Marc knows that if he dared to look at Manuel the wrong way, the rest of the team would be ready to beat him up over it. So, no, Manu doesn’t spend a second glance on what Marc is doing.

And while Manuel is able to live in the bliss of being unfought number one, Ron has probably resigned himself to a life on the national team bench for the greater portion of his time, which is why he doesn’t mind someone being better than him and is even okay with helping Marc.

As a result, training with the senior squad is _great_ and _an honour_ and everything else Marc tells his friends, but it’s like he’s missing the challenge of it all, and it takes him days to figure out why.

Marc knows he’s growing irritated and he’s sorry that he inadvertently takes it out on Kevin, who is his roommate in Frankfurt and Glasgow.

Kevin is too kind to snarl much, but Marc can tell he’s close to really blowing a fuse, when Marc’s phone goes off in the middle of the night after the match against Poland.

The ring tone is deafening, the shining screen is blinding in the quiet darkness, and Kevin growls angrily from his bed.

“The fuck,” he calls and squints at Marc.

“Shit, fuck, sorry,” Marc says as he scrambles to turn the phone off, but then he hesitates when he reads the name on the screen. Strange. “Uhm, wait, let me just take this, I think I have to – “

“I don’t care what you’re doing, as long as I’m getting my sleep right now!”

Marc quickly nods and slips out of their room into the hotel corridor as quietly as he can. His thumb hovers over his phone for another second before he accepts the call.

“Leno?” Marc asks, rubbing his hand across his eyes. “It’s midnight, you better have a fucking good reason why you’re calling me.”

No answer. Marc can hear rustling and breathing on the line, but nothing else. It’s the first time Bernd has ever contacted him via phone, and they only exchanged numbers, because everyone in the U21 Euro squad did.

“Leno,” Marc repeats with irritation. He looks up and down the corridor, but thankfully no one else is as idiotic as to stand out here in their pyjamas in the draughty cold.

“It’s midnight, you better have a good reason why you answered your phone,” Bernd finally says, and he must think that it’s fucking hilarious because he laughs huskily.

Marc sighs and leans against the smooth wall of the corridor. The movement lets his shadow wander across the dimly lit floor. He could think of better things to do at 1 am at night, but his knuckles are turning white, clasping his phone. “Are you _drunk_?”

“Eh. Kinda. I have training tomorrow, I’m not stupid, you know.”

Marc bites back the _aren’t you?,_ and thinks about it. Alcohol seems like the only possible reason why they’re having this conversation, but Leno is right, he has training at Leverkusen since he hasn’t been called up for the national team.

“You only have training tomorrow evening.”

“I took that into cal-cu-la-tions,” Bernd says in sing-song-voice. He’s only using it to rile Marc up, and, oh god, does it work.

But there’s a familiar rush in Marc’s veins, an anger that he’s been missing here in Frankfurt. He loves it, he hates it.

“Why are you calling?” he asks, pressing the phone to his ear.

“Because I’m bored?” Bernd replies, a sharp edge to his voice. “Because I want to bawl about not getting called up? Because I want to take you down a notch. Because hearing your voice makes me feel better, because I remember I’m not you? Because I went to call Karim and Chris before, but their lines were occupied? I don’t know. Pick one.”

“Right,” Marc says, unsure. None of those reasons seem good enough for him to shiver in the hallway, but then again, when have they ever been honest to each other.

Somehow, Marc is paradoxically reassured in hearing Bernd talk exactly like he used, like a proof that the world is still turning outside of the national team glass dome. Like a hint that Marc had relied on Neuer as an axis too much during the last days, that their tournament in the Czech Republic did mean something more than preparation for the senior squad.

“No, no, go ahead, really, pick one,” Bernd interrupts Marc’s train of thought, with muffled laughter that is just a toe over the line of sounding sloshed.

“Uhm. I don’t know. The fourth one?” Marc guesses tiredly. He can really feel the exhaustion setting in now, and his sight blurs in his body’s attempt to tell him to fucking finally go back to sleep and stop listening to the midnight bullshit of someone he should forget about.

“Oh god, as if I’d remember what I just said, and in what order. Fuck off, Marc,” Bernd answers with a snort, and then Marc can hear the wet sound of what he assumes are Bernd’s lips around a beer bottle.

Fucking great.

Marc has been standing still in the hallway for long enough for the apparently motion activated lights to turn off. In frustration, Marc braces his hands against the wall behind him and lets himself slide down until he’s sitting on the floor. The lights turn on again, which is a small consolation.

Marc wishes he could put the phone down.

“You’re not gonna play,” Bernd pipes up again, the same words Marc is fighting against every second in this camp. “You didn’t against Poland and you won’t against Scotland. So what do you do in training? Just chat with Neuer about how you, like, definitely don’t want him to die in a ditch or something, so you can play? That’s what I was thinking during the Euros, you know.”

Marc huffs, letting all air out of his lungs, so that his chest collapses and he curls up around his bent legs. He doesn’t care about what he looks like to a possible outsider anymore, because if Löw saw him out here at this time, Marc would be in enough trouble anyway.

But hey, what’d Löw do? Bench him?

Bernd makes an unsatisfied _tsk_ -ing noise and Marc realises that he probably wants a reply.

“Sometimes, I pray for Neuer to break his legs. But you have no proof I ever said that. And believe me,” Marc says, starting to pick at his calloused left palm with his thumb, “I know. I knew everything you thought about me. You spelled it out for me pretty clearly.”

Bernd doesn’t mention the match against Portugal nor the night afterwards, probably because he knows that Marc is thinking about it anyway.

It hits Marc that he has spent more time with Bernd than he has with some of his best friends. He’s certainly known Bernd longer than most of them, and it fucks him up to think about how the mark they left on each other is inerasable. Germany’s golden future paths of goalkeeping, sharing a single bed.

Marc digs his bare toes into the soft hotel carpet and listens to Bernd taking another swig from his bottle, waiting for him to speak again.

“It’s a joke, really, isn’t? This call-up? Like, fucking Wellenreuther from, like, fucking Mallorca but not me?” Bernd’s voice sounds breathy, almost teary now and Marc doesn’t know what to do.

He’s searching for something kind to say, but he’s at a loss.

“You’re chatty when you’re drunk.”

Bernd snuffles.

“And you’re even bitchier when I’m not there. I didn’t think that was possible.”

Marc doesn’t reply, because the sentence has truth at its core, and he can’t trust himself to say the right things at the moment, not when he’s as tired and confused as he is right now.

The whole situation is still too disorienting, too pointless for his mind to grasp. He’s talking to his favourite rival, sitting in a half-dark hotel hallway in his pyjamas, holding onto his phone like it’s a safety buoy.

The skin on palm is pink where Marc had picked at the blisters and almost drawn blood.

He remembers Bernd’s hands had been softer, and with clouded judgement he almost says something to that extent, when Bernd speaks up first.

“What are you wearing?”

“What?” Marc asks and blinks in confusion.

“I said, what are you wearing?”

Marc looks down at himself, tugging at the worn fabric of his shirt.

“I’m, uh, in my... pyjamas...?” he says, because he’s too perplexed to come up with a clever snark.

“Arousing,” Bernd says, drawing the word exaggeratedly. “The silk kind? You seem the like guy for it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Marc asks, before he catches on and he can feel his cheeks turn bright red. “Are you – holy shit – are you jerking off?”

Bernd laughs so loudly that Marc has to lift his phone from his ear.

“No. I’m too drunk,” Bernd answers. “And you’re not the one I’d call for easy phone sex.”

“Not _that_ drunk,” Marc objects, purposefully ignoring the second part of the sentence. He doesn’t want to imagine whom Bernd would call for phone sex. The Brandt guy, maybe, not that Marc keeps track.

“Drunk enough. A glass of alcohol and I can’t get it up anymore. Life is unfair like that to me.”

Marc wants to laugh at Bernd, maliciously and hatefully, but the laughter gets stuck in his throat. A memory wells up instead, and Marc suck in air through his teeth.

“Does that mean – when we – in Prague – you weren’t – at all?” Marc asks slowly and he can hear Bernd swallowing loudly on the other end of the line.

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Bernd snorts. “It doesn’t mean shit. All it means is that we’re –“

Marc never hears the end of the sentence, because Bernd makes a pause at the exact same time that a door down the hallway opens, and the lights turn on. Marc hadn’t even noticed that they had turned off again during their conversation.

It’s Karim who steps out of the room, barefoot and his hair dishevelled. His eyes widen when he spots Marc sitting on the floor, and Marc can’t really take offence at it, because it’s a weird situation for both of them.

“I gotta go,” Marc says into his phone, still looking at Karim, and ends the call with a touch of his thumb. If he had been on the line with anyone but Bernd, he might have been worried about just cutting them off, but he knows Bernd can deal. Has to deal. Has always dealed.

Karim smiles at Marc kind of sheepishly, shrugs and asks, “It’s always hard to line up schedules, huh?” He waves his hand and only then does Marc notice that Karim is also holding a phone.

Marc doesn’t manage more than some sort of affirmative noise in reply, but it seems enough, especially considering the hour.

“And it’s even later in the night in Turkey,” Karim adds strangely out of context, then, “I’m, uh, sorry if I interrupted you.”

“No, it’s alright, I can – I will talk to him tomorrow,” Marc says, and levers himself up from the hotel floor. Karim looks at Marc as if they’re sharing a moment here, some sort of intersecting fate, but Marc isn’t even sure whether he’s angry about or grateful for the disruption.

Kevin is fast asleep when Marc slips back into bed, phone next to his pillow.

Bernd doesn’t attempt to call back that night.

**Author's Note:**

> For Yuu, probably, although this is 99% self-indulgent, sorry.
> 
> Title from _Speakerphone_ by Rixton.
> 
> I'm on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/kissthecrest) if anyone wants to yell at me about goalkeepers.


End file.
